Tips 'n tricks related to CAx and PLM software and hardware. Primary posts are about Solid Edge, Insight and Teamcenter data management but there's smatterings of other "stuff" that as a hacker I feel is handy to get your job done. I'm a Siemens PLM Software employee. All opinions posted are my own and do not represent those of my employer. If you are looking for dish commentary, not gonna happen here. This is a technical how-to get stuff done better and faster blog.

October 10, 2011

In Solid Edge Embedded Client (SEEC) when creating assembly features a JT dataset is created and uploaded into Teamcenter. This assembly feature JT dataset is commonly referred to as a "JT override". SEEC JT override dataset names take the form of "Ovr_<id #>" where <id #> is some system generated
id number.

Whenever assembly features are added or modified to the existing assembly a new JT override file is created. This process then leaves the original JT override file unreferenced and effectively orphaned in Teamcenter. Over time these unreferenced JT overrides will accumulate and take up disk space.

In a Teamcenter command prompt run the "collect_garbage" command:

collect_garbage -u=infodba -p=infodba -g=dba -dataset

This command will collect *all* unreferenced datasets into a "WASTE BASKET" folder in Teamcenter:

WARNING: Do not simply delete all of the datasets collected in the "WASTE BASKET". Review the collected datasets and make informed decisions on if those datasets need to remain in Teamcenter or can be safely deleted. Whenever performing broad system maintenance utilities it is always prudent to have a good backup of Teamcenter. For the purpose of these instructions, which is focused on unreferenced JT overrides we can safely assume that all unreferenced JT datasets beginning with the name "Ovr_" are SEEC JT overrides and are safe to remove.

Review the content of the "WASTE BASKET" and use "Cut" to remove all datasets that do not start with the name "Ovr_":

Once the "WASTE BASKET" contains only the unreferenced JT override
datasets then run "collect_garbage" to delete all of the datasets
remaining in "WASTE BASKET":

collect_garbage -u=infodba -p=infodba -g=dba -dataset -delete

All SEEC generated unreferenced JT override datasets have now been successfully removed from Teamcenter.

Great question. Although it is somewhat of a generic question and without specific examples I don’t know if I can provide an all-encompassing answer.

I do know that for the SEEC JT overrides discussed in the article that it is my understanding that at the time JT override functionality was implemented in SEEC there wasn’t a Teamcenter API available to SEEC for "cleaning up" on the fly. Hence the need for manual maintenance of SEEC JT overrides and this article.

Other scenarios I’m sure have their own specific reasons as to why they don’t clean after themselves. Thankfully we do have several command line utilities available to us that when combined pretty much cover and address all areas needing cleanup and maintenance.

Then again, disk space is cheap(er) these days and this manual maintenance is not a necessity. Just slide another drive into the array and go on ;-)